Coming at the end of the festival season, the London Film Festival has long stated its aim to act as a ‘festival of festivals,’ to screen the best work already shown at Cannes, Venice, Toronto and Edinburgh to a public audience who might not get the chance to see many of these films in any other context. There’s no overriding theme here, this is more of a grab-bag of notable works, both modern and classic. Although there are some big international releases on the screening list – Richard Linklater’s Fast Food Nation, Alejandro González Iñárritu’s Babel – the festival is primarily concerned with smaller fare, local films and the cream of world cinema.
This year the British contingent is particularly strong—the Festival kicks off with Giles Foden’s The Last King Of Scotland, about the violent rein of Idi Amin. There are new films from Anthony Minghella, Roger Michell and the fearless Shane Meadows, whose This Is England deals with racist skinhead culture in early 80s suburbia. Nick Broomfield’s Ghosts, an unflinching examination of last year’s Morecambe Bay disaster, blurs the line between truth and fiction, and there’s a strong home- grown documentary strand dominated by films about musicians: Scott Walker (30th Century Man), John Lennon (The U.S. vs. John Lennon) and Arthur Lee (Love Story).
One notable (though most likely unintended) theme present throughout the festival seems to be rites of passage and coming of age stories. We have teenage fascists (This Is England), teenage cross-dressers (The Blossoming of Maximo Oliviero), even blind teenagers climbing Everest in the documentary Blindsight. From Denmark (Percy, Buffalo Bill and I) to Argentina (Glue), Germany (Lucy) to China (Taking Father Home), stories of adolescence and childhood seem ubiquitous. There’s even an historical perspective on the subject, with a screening of David Lean’s classic adaptation of Dickens’ Great Expectations.
The Festival runs from October 18th to November 2nd, in venues throughout the city.
Lukas Moodysson’s Container will carry a unique resonance for each different person who sees it. At the screening I attended there were numerous walkouts within the first thirty minutes, and it’s hard to see the film finding much of an audience. But it’s also hard to imagine an audience member who won’t find something in the film, some part of himself reflected, however disconcertingly.
Every single aspect of the film feels familiar, from the blessed-out, oversaturated photography of the opening ‘Heaven’ sequences to the bleak, blue-tinted nightmare of the hospital scenes, from the pent up suburban drudgery of Candy’s family home to the urban disarray of Danny’s warehouse flat. This ingrained lack of originality makes Candy very hard to enjoy.
Ghosts is not a documentary. But neither is it fiction—it’s best described as a dramatic recreation of actual events, as often as possible using real people to play themselves. It’s factual filmmaking without the comforting remove, and without Broomfield’s own invasive, sometimes grating presence. The result is a film that feels honest, emotive and harrowingly real.
Who Loves The Sun is superbly effective, sweet and witty and effortlessly charming. There will be those who accuse Bissonnette of a lack of ambition, a willingness to work over old themes. But this is missing the point; the film works as an evocation, a familiar and well loved melody beautifully played.
The surprise — and the joy — in Maximo Oliveros is its unstinting willingness to see the best in every situation. On the surface this is a work of straight neorealism, capturing the sights, the sounds, almost the smells of a bustling third world community in all its vivid, colourful glory. But this is no Bicycle Thieves: there’s crime, poverty, drugs, prostitution, but it’s all so cheerful, so practical and uncomplaining.
The fact remains that this is a film made by white people for white people, and as such it is, to some extent, an exploitative product. There’s scant effort made to get into the truth of the Ugandan situation, beyond Nicholas’ limited experience. We are told that 300,000 people have been murdered, but we don’t see it, we don’t feel it.
The metaphysical aspects here are used in the service of the characters, not the other way around—this is, first and foremost, a human study, a love story, an existential treatise on the inevitability of death and the preciousness of life. It’s also a charming, surprising, admittedly flawed but still rather beautiful film.
Venus is, at heart, an actor’s film, and the entire cast acquit themselves in exemplary fashion. Vanessa Redgrave is her usual luminous self, though there is a sense that both she and Richard Griffiths, as another old thespian, could do this sort of thing in their sleep. But all of them, characters and actors both, are in orbit around O’Toole’s towering performance.
For Your Consideration is a pleasure to watch, and will no doubt sustain repeated viewings, as all of Guest’s films seem to. But its joys are all ephemeral—there’s nothing to rival the fragile beauty of Mitch and Mickey, or the budding relationship between Coolidge and Jane Lynch in Best In Show. There are no all time classic characters, no outstanding scenes, nothing to really treasure. Nothing, that is, except for Fred Willard’s hair.
There are films for children, and there are films about children, but surprisingly few great films which manage to be both. The London Film Festival brochure advertises Percy, Buffalo Bill & I as family-friendly fare, but judging from the chorus of rustling, fidgeting and general restlessness which accompanied the screening I attended, this one falls squarely in the latter camp.
Black Book marks Paul Verhoeven’s return to his home country, and perhaps a return to respectability—this is the most expensive Dutch film ever made, a sprawling, epic, exquisitely mounted slice of historical fiction. But it’s also a gripping adventure, a mystery and a thriller, a war film and a love story, violent and sexually charged and riveting from start to finish.
Shane Meadows has been quietly developing his own precise, fearless, uniquely British filmmaking style for over a decade now, and This Is England marks some sort of culmination, drawing together disparate threads from throughout Meadows’ filmography and weaving them into something brave, distinctive and powerfully personal.
Buenos Aires 1977 is a film with a purpose. It isn’t entertainment, and it never tries to be. So it seems churlish to criticise the film: as a window into a world beyond most viewers’ understanding, it works flawlessly. It all comes down to a question of what cinema is for, and what a film needs, or wants to achieve.
Days Of Glory will go down in history for its political impact rather than its artistic quality. But there’s still a great deal to enjoy here, the film is intelligently written and sharply directed, a terrific central cast playing strong, memorable characters. And if nothing else, it’s good to gain a fresh, unique perspective on the Second World War, to understand yet another new facet of that most complex and fascinating of conflicts.
We’re all familiar with the trappings of the genre: a rundown inner city school, a classroom full of disaffected multiethnic students, a teacher determined to buck the system. The difference here is that the teacher in question, Ryan Gosling’s Daniel Dunne, is worse off than his charges: a disillusioned, world weary cocaine addict.
A man crashes a car through the window of a tailor, mesmerised by the expensive suits on display. An incarcerated woman dreams of bearing a child, looking for an easy life on the maternity ward. A son watches his father take sexual pleasure from his (male) masseur, before booking an appointment for himself. An audience fails to care.
The British fascination with all things American reaches a new peak with this micro- budget Irish feature from first time director Niall Heery. Wearing his influences on his sleeve, Heery has transported the ethos and atmosphere of independent American cinema and outlaw country music to backwoods Northern Ireland, creating a film which is slavishly imitative but still subtly charming.
